How do you define Sales Productivity? If you ask 10 people, you will probably get 10 different answers. In the simplest terms, Sales Productivity is improving sales efficiency in order to utilize the least number of hours to achieve the best possible results. How you measure those sales results varies from organization to organization.

To improve sales productivity, salespersons and sales managers focus on optimizing sales operations to reach the best possible outcome. Salespersons can improve their sales productivity by implementing better sales processes; generating meaningful, timely conversations with prospects and clients; and using better tools to improve their sales efficiency.

How Can LifeTopix Help?

In 2010, we at LightArrow set out to develop the most comprehensive personal organization app available in the market today. As this app, LifeTopix, evolved over the last few years, we’ve participated in thousands of conversations with our customers about how they’re using the app. We’re finding that more and more salespersons and micro/small business owners are using LifeTopix to manage not only their personal lives, but also their business operations and clients. To meet this demand, we added features requested by our user community with the goal of enhancing sales operations. Some of these features are enabled through the in-app purchases available in LifeTopix, Pro Contacts and Pro Inbox. Furthermore, in the coming weeks, we’ll release the stand-alone apps, Pro.Inbox and Pro.Contacts, for those who want to primarily concentrate on managing information streams from social, web, and email or contacts. Keep reading to learn more about these exciting new, features and how you can take advantage of them today.

1. Does Your CRM Meet the Demands of the Post PC Era?

As personal computers decline and mobile devices increase, otherwise known as the Post-PC Era, more and more salespersons will use their mobile devices while on the go, in lieu of laptops. In fact, salespersons are one of the fastest-growing segments of those who are adopting tablets as their device of choice when on the move.

As mobile software evolves, it’s becoming more and more sophisticated to meet the demands of those who wish to do business while mobile, without a laptop. We’ve been designing LifeTopix for the post-pc era from the get-go. LifeTopix is not an app that does one thing, such as making a to-do list or remembering to pick up milk. Its features run the gamut. It provides everything from a sophisticated calendar – to project management – to social media management – and more. It fully runs on your device, which is particularly important for the salesperson that doesn’t have Wi-Fi available at all times while on the road.

2. How Can You Manage Your Leads, Prospects & Customers More Efficiently?

In the latest version of LifeTopix, you’ll find new Contact Management features, which allow you to more efficiently manage your leads, prospects and clients. Most importantly, we’ve added custom log forms and custom log items, which allow you to add user-defined information about your contacts and subsequently group by these contacts by log items.

For example, Mary works for a small wine producer in California and her job is to find wine distributors and retailers to sell the wine from her winery. She manages her leads, prospects, and clients in LifeTopix. To help her better manage her contacts, Mary created a custom log form, which she titled: Sales information. She’s added several log items, which include, “Lead Score” as well as other relevant information. This way, Mary can group all of the sales leads by Lead Score, which allows her to better prioritize her sales calls.

In the following image, you’re viewing LifeTopix’s Grid view for Contacts, which is available in the People + Services topic with the Pro Contacts in-app purchase. It’s a spreadsheet-like format, which allows you to easily manage many contacts from one view. You can see how Mary has created the “Lead Score” log item and sorted her contacts by Lead Score.

What’s great about this view in LifeTopix is that Mary can easily locate all the information for her prospects and customers in one place. She can also set reminders and appointments, schedule associated tasks, add notes, call or email the client directly, record expenses, and view any other custom information — all from this useful view in LifeTopix.

3. What’s a Better Way to Generate Meaningful, Timely Conversations?

One of the best ways to increase your sales productivity is to generate timely, meaningful conversations. A good strategy for making a conversation meaningful and positive is to know something about your customer and his or her company and industry. You should always have a holistic view of your leads, prospects, and clients. As you build and nurture your relationships with prospects and customers, it’s important to stay up to date. Social engagement can give you insight into your prospects and customers, allowing you to tailor your interactions appropriately.

To help you to stay on top of customers, industries, and topics that your customers are interested in, we’ve added the Pro Inbox features of LifeTopix. LifeTopix allows you to create information streams from email, Twitter, Facebook and the web with rules. For example, Mary the wine producer’s salesperson, can collect information from social, web, and email about her clients and the wine industry and read this information from one view. This saves countless hours of switching from various social media and email applications to gather the information she needs about her clients and the wine industry.

For example, if Mary uses Twitter, she can filter data from those she follows, Twitter users, public lists, or all of Twitter. She can add keywords or hashtags to find specific information about wine distributors and retailers. She can collect, share and convert her data nuggets to actionable items such as tasks, projects, products, appointments, hosting events, attending events, notes, trips, visitors and inbox items. She can also stay on task with comprehensive calendar views, which show converted tasks, appointments and more. The following image shows an example of how Mary would configure a Twitter stream from public twitter accounts to gather information about the wine industry.

4. How Do You Strike When the Iron is Hot?

Not only can Mary collect important information, she can also strike when the iron is hot because with LifeTopix, she can easily make email, web data and social streams actionable. For example, if Mary notices that a client is requesting information via Twitter or if there is an important change in the wine industry that affects her prospects or clients, she can easily turn this information into action by converting it to an event, appointment, task, reminder or other LifeTopix object in a few simple clicks – from one app, as shown in the following graphic.

5. How Do You Save Time Traveling from Call to Call?

Planning your activity with Location Services can help you increase your sales productivity when traveling. All your precious time spent commuting from place-to-place or spending time in the air takes away from your selling time. For example, Mary is planning a trip to Austin, TX to meet with an important client who distributes wine for the Texas region. While she’s there, she plans to meet with other potential distributors. With LifeTopix, it’s easy to see the distributors that are listed as contacts and are located in the vicinity of the client she’s visiting, which enables her to efficiently set up sales visits with those prospects, as shown in the following image.

What’s Next?

We’ve only described a portion of the LifeTopix features that can help you improve your sales productivity. As you begin to use the LifeTopix app, you’ll find ways to become more efficient and productive in many aspects of your work and life. Please comment and tell us about your experience with LifeTopix or any feature requests that you may have. Cheers!